18 April

The 1906 San Francisco earthquake struck at 5:12 a.m. on this day in 1906 with an estimated moment magnitude of 7.8 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (Extreme).

Severe shaking was felt from Eureka on the North Coast to the Salinas Valley, an agricultural region to the south of the San Francisco Bay Area. Devastating fires soon broke out in the city and lasted for several days. As a result, about 3,000 people died and over 80% of the city of San Francisco was destroyed. The events are remembered as one of the worst and deadliest natural disasters in the history of the United States. The death toll remains the greatest loss of life from a natural disaster in California’s history and high in the lists of American urban disasters.

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